The present invention relates to a disk player system, and more particularly, to a multi-disk player system that is capable of accommodating a plurality of disks and which enables continuous playing of music on a series of randomly selected disks.
The jukebox may be regarded as a common type of multi-disk player, but the conventional jukebox is contained within a very large cabinet and is not suitable for use at home.
With the recent advance in digital recording technology, several types of digital audio disks (hereinafter abbreviated as DAD) have been developed and are in extensive use. Compared with the conventional analog audio disks, DADs feature an increased information capacity and a reduced noise problem during reproduction. Small-sized DADs (o.d. of about 12 cm) are commonly referred to as compact disks which are adapted to have signals written and read thereon by a laser beam; compact disks are simple to use and enable reduction in the overall size of the disk player. Making use of these features of small-sized DADs, audio makers have recently developed a multi-disk player which is ideal as a home jukebox and which is capable of continuous playing of a plurality of (typically 5 or 6) compact disks. It is worth noting that a single compact disk can play approximately one hour, which is equivalent to about 1.5 times the information capacity of the conventional analog audio disk. This means that 6 compact disks have a capacity of about 120 pieces of music assuming that each piece continues for a period of 3 minutes on average, and as a result, the listener can make his own music library containing favorite pieces in magazines classified by genre such as jazz, chanson or classics.
The basic components of the multi-disk player are a playing means including a turntable and a pickup, a magazine containing a series of disks disposed at a given pitch in an orderly manner, and a disk pickup and transport mechanism that selects a desired disk from the magazine and transports the same to the play position, or on to the turntable.
With the currently available multi-disk players, the listener who wants to play a disk on which is recorded a piece of music of a certain genre such as jazz must first withdraw from the player housing the magazine containing a disk on which are recorded pieces of another genre and then replace said magazine by the one containing the disk with the desired piece; alternatively, any one of the disks within a magazine for another genre that has been withdrawn from the player housing is replaced by the desired disk and the magazine now containing the desired disk is re-loaded into the player housing. If the listener wants to play more than one disk, he must repeat either one of the procedures described above for each disk. Therefore, the user of the conventional multi-disk player always finds it cumbersome to replace disks on the player.